CURRENTLY READING…

By Cheryl Marks Young

BUY NOW

By Anodea Judith

BUY NOW

My Bookshelf

Browse the books I own, am currently reading, or highly recommend for those on their spiritual path.

Conversations With God Trilogy

Conversations With God

by Neale Donald Walsch

BUY NOW

Destiny of Souls

Destiny of Souls

by Michael Newton

BUY NOW

Journey of Souls

Journey of Souls

By Michael Newton

BUY NOW

Glynnis Has your Number

Glynnis Has your Number

by Glynnis McCants

BUY NOW

The Electric Jesus

The Electric Jesus

by Jonathan Talat Phillips

BUY NOW

The Power of Now

The Power of Now

By Eckhart Tolle

BUY NOW

The Dream Dictionary A-Z

The Dream Dictionary A-Z

by Theresa Chung

BUY NOW

The Watkins Tarot Handbook

The Watkins Tarot Handbook

by Naomi Ozaniek

BUY NOW

Many Lives, Many Masters

Many Lives, Many Masters

By Brian Weiss

BUY NOW

Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way

Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way

by John C. Parkin

BUY NOW

The Custodians

The Custodians

by Dolores Cannon

BUY NOW

The Convoluted Universe

The Convoluted Universe

By Dolores Cannon

BUY NOW

IMSS is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

@ASHRISING ON INSTAGRAM

Instagram post 2144595770326577276_2925114972

I really hate peanut butter cookies. In my 36 years on earth, I’ve never met one that I liked.
✳︎ And yet, every single fucking time I see one, I still think, “Maybe this time…” ✳︎ I pick it up. I take a bite. Nope. Still hate peanut butter cookies. ✳︎ The fact that I still try it every time I see it thinking that maybe this will be the one and somehow my aversion will magically shift, all the while fully knowing I don’t like them and never have, is the definition of insanity. But that’s what ingrained behaviors do to us. ✳︎ I’ve found myself exhibiting this same behavioral pattern in other areas of my life, particularly relationships. Falling for the same kind of people over and over. Giving them chance after chance, thinking somehow, this time, it would end differently. But it doesn’t. And I knew it wouldn’t, just like I know I fucking hate peanut butter cookies. ✳︎ At some point you’ve got to look in the mirror and tell yourself, ‘You know you hate peanut butter cookies. You know you’d much rather have a snickerdoodle or a sugar cookie. The only reason you keep trying peanut butter cookies is because that’s the only thing available. And you know what? IT’S FUCKING OK TO GO WITHOUT THE GOD DAMN COOKIE IF IT’S NOT WHAT YOU’RE REALLY LOOKING FOR.”
✳︎
And the same goes for romantic partners. And friends. And jobs. And any other hypothetical thing your peanut butter cookie could be a metaphor for.
✳︎
Be willing to wait for what will fulfill you instead of trying to settle with what’s in front of you, lest you keep taking a bite and spitting it out because it’s disgusting. Every. Fucking. Time.
✳︎
#standards #whatyouseekisseekingyou #raiseyourstandards #consciousliving #value #knowyourworth #consciousrelationships

Instagram post 1993786221894947589_2925114972

I’ve had this picture since September. I’ve almost posted it on multiple occasions, but then didn’t.
✳︎
I’m not sure why, but it makes me slightly uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the vulnerability it evokes. It makes me feel silly. That must sound odd, coming from someone who regularly spills their deepest thoughts to 14,000 people, but writing my feelings for thousands of people I’ll never meet provides a safe buffer. There’s still a computer screen between us. You can feel me, but you can’t see me. Not really.
✳︎
You see, the thing is, for years and years I never cried. I could count on one hand all the times I let a tear escape—maybe four or five times a year? Certainly never in front of people.
✳︎
Up until a couple of months ago, I’d cried in the presence of exactly eight people in the past 20 years. Three of them were therapists, another three were singular occurrences with friends, two of whom were both with me when it happened. One was a single tear shed in front of an ex from college, and the last was my ex-husband, and I’d never cried in front of him until our divorce (with the exception of when we put my cat to sleep).
✳︎
I’m still not comfortable being THAT vulnerable in front of people. I can really only think of one occasion where I really allowed myself to be a full on train wreck in front of another human being. It was 13 years ago when I showed up at @magdaziza ‘s apartment at four in the morning sobbing uncontrollably, and she let me lay in bed with her until I cried myself to sleep.
✳︎
Having another person witness your deepest pain is the most vulnerable any of us will ever feel. But when that pain is met by steady presence and total acceptance, it can also be the most healing thing any of us will ever experience.
✳︎
When was the last time you cried in front of someone?
✳︎
#crying #healing #vulnerability #tears #cry #writingtoheal #wordsthatheal #instadaily #creativewriting #words #honestlyworded #thoughtoftheday #lifequotes #soul #instagood #wordporn #spiritual #spilledink #wordsofwisdom #writer #healer #lightworker #awakening #quoteoftheday #lifequotes #personaldevelopment #reflectingoutloud

Instagram post 2003184493617025351_2925114972

Let me tell you about the day I threw my career in the trash—but first…let’s talk about how I got there.
✳︎
After seven years of working full time in disgustingly toxic work environments, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I was working for an ecommerce startup owned by a crack addict, coming home every day to drink an entire bottle of wine just to deal with the stress of being there.
✳︎
My husband at the time pointed out, “You’re not yourself.”
✳︎
At his urging and encouragement, I started my own business. Over the next four years, I grew that business to a level of success I’d never experienced while working for anyone else.
✳︎
Incidentally, I began In My Sacred Space six months after. The two grew side-by-side over the course of the next four years.
✳︎
One day, when I was sitting in a meeting with one of my clients, he looked at me and asked, “Do you want to run this business?”
✳︎
I felt a wave of internal resistance. Not because I was afraid or thought I was incapable.
✳︎
My ego said, “Yes! Do it! You’ll be the CEO of a fashion tech startup at 33.”
✳︎
But my soul said, “This will suck every ounce of life out of you. And for what? You don’t give a single fuck about fashion.”
✳︎
That was when I realized my true passion was not for helping other people grow their businesses. It was for helping other people grow. Period.
✳︎
My longterm goal at the end of 2016 was to put myself on a trajectory to be involved in personal development and spirituality full-time.
✳︎
Then life, as it often does, happened. My largest client went AWOL on the same day that my marriage imploded. Four and a half months later, I packed up my shit, moved to New York City and started fresh with no friends, no job, and no plan.
✳︎
Initially I thought I’d attempt to rebuild my business in a new place, which was certainly ripe with opportunities for someone with my skillset, and I busily set about laying a foundation to do so in my first three months here. (Continued in comments)
📷: @robstamm14

Instagram post 1996002741916212736_2925114972

#love #instadaily #creativewriting #words #honestlyworded #thoughtoftheday #lovequotes #soul #instagood #wordporn #spilledink #wordsofwisdom #sacredunion #writer #poet #poetsofinstagram #poetry #writersofinstagram #quoteoftheday #reflectingoutloud #writingcommunity #writersofig #poet #poetry #poetsofinstagram

Instagram post 2141568563324659780_2925114972

ON MANAGING ANXIETY
✳︎
In my stories earlier this week, I asked what other topics you’d be interested in hearing about from me and someone asked me to touch on how to control feelings of anxiety. ✳︎ First, I want to say that I don’t think you can control anxiety, per se, but you can learn how to manage it and eventually heal it. Anxiety is your body’s physiological response to an external or internal stress trigger. Particularly in the latter case, anxiety is your body’s way of alerting you that there’s an unresolved, internal emotional conflict rooted in fear. It’s a feeling and we can’t control how we feel.
✳︎ As I’ve become more energetically sensitive over the last couple of years, I’ve begun to notice where in my body I physically feel certain emotions. I almost always feel anxiety in my heart or my stomach, or both. ✳︎ From an energetic standpoint, anxiety occurs when your energy becomes ungrounded. That means that, rather than flowing down through your body and connecting with earth, your energy current is stopping or being blocked at the heart chakra or the solar plexus.
✳︎
In order to manage this, you want to get the energy flowing down through your body again. Here’s a few yoga, mindfulness, and energetic tactics I’ve picked up over the years to help with that: ✳︎ 1️⃣ Deep Breathing
Take deep belly breaths with your lower belly. Short breaths from your chest exacerbate the fight or flight fear response that’s happening physiologically. When you take deep breaths from your lower belly, it calms your heart rate and helps draw energy down into your sacral chakra and gets things flowing again.
✳︎
2️⃣ Physical Grounding Take your right hand and ball it into a fist, place it on top of your lower belly, place your left hand over the fist, and then push into your abdomen while bending over slightly. This is another yogic tactic meant to help ground you back into your lower body by bringing physical awareness to it. Bring as much of your awareness to your physical body, particularly the lower extremities, as possible. [continued 👇🏻]

Instagram post 1997357290547420323_2925114972

I'm realizing that I take serious issue with the commercialization of spirituality.
✳︎
Once the desire for success overtakes the desire for service to the greater good, you cross the border into service of your own ego, and the work loses its integrity.
✳︎
I think this is one of the reasons I've taken a sabbatical from offering paid services. If I'm in a position where I *need* to make my spiritual work support me financially, then I'm inherently driven by a state of lack wherein my primary motivation is to make money, rather than to be of service.
✳︎
If I'm inherently driven by a state of lack wherein my primary motivation is to achieve status and success, rather than be of service, the work also loses its integrity.
✳︎
This concept applies to business, as well as life—when you lose sight of your mission, you find yourself out of alignment with your higher purpose.
✳︎
Spiritual work is sacred work. People are trusting you with their deepest level of vulnerability. You have a responsibility to honor that within your interactions.
✳︎
It's important to periodically check in with ourselves and give our motivations a hard, honest assessment.
✳︎
You might be sitting there thinking, “Well Ash, nobody ever became a millionaire with that attitude.”
✳︎
And you’d be erroneously assuming that I desire to be a millionaire. I don’t. I’ve known a few. They’re rarely happy and are frequently followed by a trail of regrets. The happy ones are the people who followed a passion, the money was just a pleasant side effect.
✳︎
You can be successful and still do what you love. The difference is that if you do what you love, you're more likely to be successful. You can't help but attract that to yourself. If you strive primarily for success and lose sight of what you love, you're just like everybody else at the end of the day, wasting your life, sacrificing real happiness while working your ass off for something that never truly fulfills you.
✳︎
Have you checked your motivations today?
✳︎
#motivation #commercialization #spirituality #bereal #behonestwithyourself #spiritualbusiness #soulpreneur #heartbasedbusiness #growyourlove #fuckthehustle #businesswoman

Instagram post 1995231793868809256_2925114972

People throw the term “narcissist” around like confetti. 🎊 But being a self-centered ass hat IS NOT synonymous with narcissism.
🍑🎩
Everyone has narcissistic traits. It’s part of being human. When you have achieved a specific percentage of narcissistic traits, you are clinically qualified for a personality disorder.
💯%
Some of the REAL tell-tale signs of narcissism (of a personality disorder level) are as follows:
✔️
↪️ Perpetual victim mentality. They’re never wrong. This person has never once taken responsibility for their own emotions, failings, or actions and everything—I mean EVERYTHING—is always someone else’s fault. The world is against them. It’s not that they are in denial or simply choosing not to be responsible—they legitimately don’t have the capacity to see themselves as the source of their own shit. This leads to point #2...
↪️ Incapable of empathy. They are incapable of seeing the world from any perspective that isn’t theirs. You can’t rationalize with them. It’s like they can’t comprehend what you’re saying and they simply ignore it. They don’t have the capacity to imagine how another person feels.
↪️ Masterfully manipulative. Not because they are evil genius level strategists who gaslight you as a means to an end, but because they ACTUALLY BELIEVE the lies they tell others. They live within a delusional mental landscape of their own creation that constantly shifts to accommodate their need for superiority.
↪️ Delusions of grandeur. I’m not talking about being overly proud of one’s accomplishments, I mean Donald Trump level grandiosity. “I am the best, everything I do is the greatest,” and imagining themselves to be of a god-like status. They are drawn to positions of ultimate power and authority, particularly political and spiritual authority.
✝️
A lot of narcissists exist in fields where they can “help” others because it allows them to be surrounded by people who look up to them, constantly compliment them, and provide a sense of worship which feeds their delusional desire for perfection.
✳︎
Comment with a 🤮 of you’re tired of people labeling every asshole they meet with a psychological disorder.
😒
📷: @poppiphotography

Instagram post 2144595770326577276_2925114972

I really hate peanut butter cookies. In my 36 years on earth, I’ve never met one that I liked.
✳︎ And yet, every single fucking time I see one, I still think, “Maybe this time…” ✳︎ I pick it up. I take a bite. Nope. Still hate peanut butter cookies. ✳︎ The fact that I still try it every time I see it thinking that maybe this will be the one and somehow my aversion will magically shift, all the while fully knowing I don’t like them and never have, is the definition of insanity. But that’s what ingrained behaviors do to us. ✳︎ I’ve found myself exhibiting this same behavioral pattern in other areas of my life, particularly relationships. Falling for the same kind of people over and over. Giving them chance after chance, thinking somehow, this time, it would end differently. But it doesn’t. And I knew it wouldn’t, just like I know I fucking hate peanut butter cookies. ✳︎ At some point you’ve got to look in the mirror and tell yourself, ‘You know you hate peanut butter cookies. You know you’d much rather have a snickerdoodle or a sugar cookie. The only reason you keep trying peanut butter cookies is because that’s the only thing available. And you know what? IT’S FUCKING OK TO GO WITHOUT THE GOD DAMN COOKIE IF IT’S NOT WHAT YOU’RE REALLY LOOKING FOR.”
✳︎
And the same goes for romantic partners. And friends. And jobs. And any other hypothetical thing your peanut butter cookie could be a metaphor for.
✳︎
Be willing to wait for what will fulfill you instead of trying to settle with what’s in front of you, lest you keep taking a bite and spitting it out because it’s disgusting. Every. Fucking. Time.
✳︎
#standards #whatyouseekisseekingyou #raiseyourstandards #consciousliving #value #knowyourworth #consciousrelationships

Instagram post 1993786221894947589_2925114972

I’ve had this picture since September. I’ve almost posted it on multiple occasions, but then didn’t.
✳︎
I’m not sure why, but it makes me slightly uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the vulnerability it evokes. It makes me feel silly. That must sound odd, coming from someone who regularly spills their deepest thoughts to 14,000 people, but writing my feelings for thousands of people I’ll never meet provides a safe buffer. There’s still a computer screen between us. You can feel me, but you can’t see me. Not really.
✳︎
You see, the thing is, for years and years I never cried. I could count on one hand all the times I let a tear escape—maybe four or five times a year? Certainly never in front of people.
✳︎
Up until a couple of months ago, I’d cried in the presence of exactly eight people in the past 20 years. Three of them were therapists, another three were singular occurrences with friends, two of whom were both with me when it happened. One was a single tear shed in front of an ex from college, and the last was my ex-husband, and I’d never cried in front of him until our divorce (with the exception of when we put my cat to sleep).
✳︎
I’m still not comfortable being THAT vulnerable in front of people. I can really only think of one occasion where I really allowed myself to be a full on train wreck in front of another human being. It was 13 years ago when I showed up at @magdaziza ‘s apartment at four in the morning sobbing uncontrollably, and she let me lay in bed with her until I cried myself to sleep.
✳︎
Having another person witness your deepest pain is the most vulnerable any of us will ever feel. But when that pain is met by steady presence and total acceptance, it can also be the most healing thing any of us will ever experience.
✳︎
When was the last time you cried in front of someone?
✳︎
#crying #healing #vulnerability #tears #cry #writingtoheal #wordsthatheal #instadaily #creativewriting #words #honestlyworded #thoughtoftheday #lifequotes #soul #instagood #wordporn #spiritual #spilledink #wordsofwisdom #writer #healer #lightworker #awakening #quoteoftheday #lifequotes #personaldevelopment #reflectingoutloud

Instagram post 2003184493617025351_2925114972

Let me tell you about the day I threw my career in the trash—but first…let’s talk about how I got there.
✳︎
After seven years of working full time in disgustingly toxic work environments, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I was working for an ecommerce startup owned by a crack addict, coming home every day to drink an entire bottle of wine just to deal with the stress of being there.
✳︎
My husband at the time pointed out, “You’re not yourself.”
✳︎
At his urging and encouragement, I started my own business. Over the next four years, I grew that business to a level of success I’d never experienced while working for anyone else.
✳︎
Incidentally, I began In My Sacred Space six months after. The two grew side-by-side over the course of the next four years.
✳︎
One day, when I was sitting in a meeting with one of my clients, he looked at me and asked, “Do you want to run this business?”
✳︎
I felt a wave of internal resistance. Not because I was afraid or thought I was incapable.
✳︎
My ego said, “Yes! Do it! You’ll be the CEO of a fashion tech startup at 33.”
✳︎
But my soul said, “This will suck every ounce of life out of you. And for what? You don’t give a single fuck about fashion.”
✳︎
That was when I realized my true passion was not for helping other people grow their businesses. It was for helping other people grow. Period.
✳︎
My longterm goal at the end of 2016 was to put myself on a trajectory to be involved in personal development and spirituality full-time.
✳︎
Then life, as it often does, happened. My largest client went AWOL on the same day that my marriage imploded. Four and a half months later, I packed up my shit, moved to New York City and started fresh with no friends, no job, and no plan.
✳︎
Initially I thought I’d attempt to rebuild my business in a new place, which was certainly ripe with opportunities for someone with my skillset, and I busily set about laying a foundation to do so in my first three months here. (Continued in comments)
📷: @robstamm14

Instagram post 1996002741916212736_2925114972

#love #instadaily #creativewriting #words #honestlyworded #thoughtoftheday #lovequotes #soul #instagood #wordporn #spilledink #wordsofwisdom #sacredunion #writer #poet #poetsofinstagram #poetry #writersofinstagram #quoteoftheday #reflectingoutloud #writingcommunity #writersofig #poet #poetry #poetsofinstagram

Instagram post 2141568563324659780_2925114972

ON MANAGING ANXIETY
✳︎
In my stories earlier this week, I asked what other topics you’d be interested in hearing about from me and someone asked me to touch on how to control feelings of anxiety. ✳︎ First, I want to say that I don’t think you can control anxiety, per se, but you can learn how to manage it and eventually heal it. Anxiety is your body’s physiological response to an external or internal stress trigger. Particularly in the latter case, anxiety is your body’s way of alerting you that there’s an unresolved, internal emotional conflict rooted in fear. It’s a feeling and we can’t control how we feel.
✳︎ As I’ve become more energetically sensitive over the last couple of years, I’ve begun to notice where in my body I physically feel certain emotions. I almost always feel anxiety in my heart or my stomach, or both. ✳︎ From an energetic standpoint, anxiety occurs when your energy becomes ungrounded. That means that, rather than flowing down through your body and connecting with earth, your energy current is stopping or being blocked at the heart chakra or the solar plexus.
✳︎
In order to manage this, you want to get the energy flowing down through your body again. Here’s a few yoga, mindfulness, and energetic tactics I’ve picked up over the years to help with that: ✳︎ 1️⃣ Deep Breathing
Take deep belly breaths with your lower belly. Short breaths from your chest exacerbate the fight or flight fear response that’s happening physiologically. When you take deep breaths from your lower belly, it calms your heart rate and helps draw energy down into your sacral chakra and gets things flowing again.
✳︎
2️⃣ Physical Grounding Take your right hand and ball it into a fist, place it on top of your lower belly, place your left hand over the fist, and then push into your abdomen while bending over slightly. This is another yogic tactic meant to help ground you back into your lower body by bringing physical awareness to it. Bring as much of your awareness to your physical body, particularly the lower extremities, as possible. [continued 👇🏻]

Instagram post 1997357290547420323_2925114972

I'm realizing that I take serious issue with the commercialization of spirituality.
✳︎
Once the desire for success overtakes the desire for service to the greater good, you cross the border into service of your own ego, and the work loses its integrity.
✳︎
I think this is one of the reasons I've taken a sabbatical from offering paid services. If I'm in a position where I *need* to make my spiritual work support me financially, then I'm inherently driven by a state of lack wherein my primary motivation is to make money, rather than to be of service.
✳︎
If I'm inherently driven by a state of lack wherein my primary motivation is to achieve status and success, rather than be of service, the work also loses its integrity.
✳︎
This concept applies to business, as well as life—when you lose sight of your mission, you find yourself out of alignment with your higher purpose.
✳︎
Spiritual work is sacred work. People are trusting you with their deepest level of vulnerability. You have a responsibility to honor that within your interactions.
✳︎
It's important to periodically check in with ourselves and give our motivations a hard, honest assessment.
✳︎
You might be sitting there thinking, “Well Ash, nobody ever became a millionaire with that attitude.”
✳︎
And you’d be erroneously assuming that I desire to be a millionaire. I don’t. I’ve known a few. They’re rarely happy and are frequently followed by a trail of regrets. The happy ones are the people who followed a passion, the money was just a pleasant side effect.
✳︎
You can be successful and still do what you love. The difference is that if you do what you love, you're more likely to be successful. You can't help but attract that to yourself. If you strive primarily for success and lose sight of what you love, you're just like everybody else at the end of the day, wasting your life, sacrificing real happiness while working your ass off for something that never truly fulfills you.
✳︎
Have you checked your motivations today?
✳︎
#motivation #commercialization #spirituality #bereal #behonestwithyourself #spiritualbusiness #soulpreneur #heartbasedbusiness #growyourlove #fuckthehustle #businesswoman

Instagram post 1995231793868809256_2925114972

People throw the term “narcissist” around like confetti. 🎊 But being a self-centered ass hat IS NOT synonymous with narcissism.
🍑🎩
Everyone has narcissistic traits. It’s part of being human. When you have achieved a specific percentage of narcissistic traits, you are clinically qualified for a personality disorder.
💯%
Some of the REAL tell-tale signs of narcissism (of a personality disorder level) are as follows:
✔️
↪️ Perpetual victim mentality. They’re never wrong. This person has never once taken responsibility for their own emotions, failings, or actions and everything—I mean EVERYTHING—is always someone else’s fault. The world is against them. It’s not that they are in denial or simply choosing not to be responsible—they legitimately don’t have the capacity to see themselves as the source of their own shit. This leads to point #2...
↪️ Incapable of empathy. They are incapable of seeing the world from any perspective that isn’t theirs. You can’t rationalize with them. It’s like they can’t comprehend what you’re saying and they simply ignore it. They don’t have the capacity to imagine how another person feels.
↪️ Masterfully manipulative. Not because they are evil genius level strategists who gaslight you as a means to an end, but because they ACTUALLY BELIEVE the lies they tell others. They live within a delusional mental landscape of their own creation that constantly shifts to accommodate their need for superiority.
↪️ Delusions of grandeur. I’m not talking about being overly proud of one’s accomplishments, I mean Donald Trump level grandiosity. “I am the best, everything I do is the greatest,” and imagining themselves to be of a god-like status. They are drawn to positions of ultimate power and authority, particularly political and spiritual authority.
✝️
A lot of narcissists exist in fields where they can “help” others because it allows them to be surrounded by people who look up to them, constantly compliment them, and provide a sense of worship which feeds their delusional desire for perfection.
✳︎
Comment with a 🤮 of you’re tired of people labeling every asshole they meet with a psychological disorder.
😒
📷: @poppiphotography

Pin It on Pinterest